---
layout: post
title: "Privacy Guides Fund Committee Minutes from 2024-09-07"
date: 2024-09-07
author: jonaharagon
---

## Attendance

**Present:** Jonah Aragon, Niek de Wilde, Daniel Gray, Freddy

Justin Ehrenhofer (MAGIC President) joined meeting as non-voting advisor.

## Agenda

1. Jonah: Review reimbursement
2. Niek: Product review policy
3. Freddy: Criteria for employee review

## Reimbursement Request

Jonah requested reimbursement for 2 EasyOptOuts subscriptions used in an upcoming review, total $39.98.

**Affirmative votes (3):**

- Niek
- Freddy
- Daniel

**Recused/Abstained (1):**

- Jonah

## Product Review

Niek wanted to know the goals and implementation details of our product review series on the blog. Jonah said that he thinks we should generally judge products by the criteria of their associated section on the main site, but that reviews should also include subjective experiences and give a more well-rounded idea of the product to readers outside simply our privacy/security opinions. This discussion was informative for the record, and was not voted on.

## Freely-Provided Product Samples

Jonah proposed the following policy for accepting test/review samples of paid products from vendors:

- Privacy Guides **shall not** proactively reach out to vendors asking for product samples or review accounts.
- Privacy Guides **shall not** accept test/review accounts for subscription cloud services.
- Privacy Guides **may** accept freely-provided product samples for one-time purchase software applications which run locally, given they don't require a subscription for continued operation.
- Privacy Guides **may** accept freely-provided samples of hardware products.
  - Privacy Guides **may** accept a freely-provided subscription service associated with a hardware product, if such a subscription/license is necessary to use the product.
- Privacy Guides **must not** enter into an agreement pertaining to our editorial opinion with the vendor in order to receive a sample or publish a review. All freely-provided items must be strictly "no strings attached."
  - We **may** agree to return the product to the vendor following the review, this should not be considered our default position.
  - We **may** agree to a reasonable NDA, provided it has a clear embargo date that is lifted no more than 6 months in the future where the NDA completely no longer applies.
  - We **should not** enter into any other agreement with the vendor not described here. Potential agreements not described here must be approved by the executive committee beforehand.

In all cases, how we obtained the product **must** be clearly documented in the background section of every article associated with the product.

Products we receive become assets of Privacy Guides. At an executive committee meeting following the publication of the review, the committee may decide on an individual basis whether to retain the product for future Privacy Guides-related use, give the product to the reviewer if it is no longer needed, sell the product if it is no longer needed, or handle it in some other way. We should only relinquish the product to the reviewer personally following a review if the value of the product is less than $100 USD, outside of exceptional circumstances.

**Affirmative votes (4):**

- Jonah
- Niek
- Freddy
- Daniel

## Employee Review

Freddy wants to establish monthly reports of employee activity. Jonah agreed this could be done at the beginning of executive committee meetings. We want to establish a more structured goals system, especially for future employee hires, and Niek suggested reaching out to other nonprofits for advice. This discussion was informative for the record, and was not voted on.
